Many vehicles on the road today operate as individual systems. As vehicles get ever more complex, however, they also become ever more computerized. Computers have worked their way into many aspects of vehicle technology, although their presence is more prevalent in Infotainment Systems.
Vehicles are traditionally compartmentalized into separate operational areas, such as, but not limited to, Infotainment and Climate Control, Chassis and Body systems, Active Safety and Powertrain. While all areas have seen massive development over the last several decades, Infotainment is primarily the only system to integrate external interaction, with remote sources like the internet, and nearby wireless devices such as phones and PDAs.
Integration of data from outside sources with other aspects of vehicle control, however, is largely unpracticed. Certain systems may be optimizable with the proper data, but typically this will require access to large data-sources that are dynamic and up-to-date. Also, optimization calculations can be intensive, and it may be the case that the limited resources available to a vehicle computing system are not capable of handling the computations needed for system optimization.
Integration of cloud based systems with vehicle control systems can be problematic. For example, a powertrain control system is a control system operating continually and distributed over a limited set of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) in a tightly scheduled real-time environment with low latencies and fast communication. Internet systems, on the other hand, are often made up of independent hosts with comparatively huge computation capacity operating in an event driven paradigm (i.e., computation on demand, as opposed to continuous). Mobile communication from a vehicle computing system to an internet system is comparatively slow, with high and varying latency and lost packets that can wreak havoc on processes requiring a constant data feed.